Until now the electrode deposition of polyimide-containing resins has been restricted to non-aqueous electrocoating systems that are low in resin solids. Because organic solvents are expensive, polluting, and possibly toxic, it would be highly desirable to be able to process polyimide containing resins by electrodeposition from an aqueous medium. The difficulty in doing this is that polyimides are generally not soluble in water. Thus, while it may be possible to electrodeposit polyamic acid resins from aqueous medium, and subsequently condense water from the resin to form the imide groups, until now it has not been possible to electrodeposit compounds that already contain an imide group from an aqueous medium.